Groundbreaking for tower manufacturing plant in Michigan By Chris Madison (AWEA)

"Clean energy is one of the economic sectors we’ve targeted in our ongoing efforts to diversify Michigan’s economy," Granholm said. "Ventower’s state-of-the-art facility will help us toward our goal of making Michigan a center for green manufacturing."

Rep. Dingell noted that "This is also demonstrative of the great benefits and returns from the Recovery Act passed by Congress." Earlier this year Ventower was awarded an advanced-energy manufacturing tax credit under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.

“Our commitment to domestic manufacturing and renewable energy have been important drivers during our pre-construction efforts. We are enthused to have reached this important milestone,” said CEO and President Gregory Adanin. “We will continue to collaborate with local officials and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) to make Monroe and Southeast Michigan a regional center of advanced wind energy component manufacturing, education and innovation.”

Jeff Anthony, AWEA Director of Business Development was in attendance for the ceremony and recognized company officials for their efforts in bringing this wind power facility to fruition after working for some time, and noted "This announcement continues to point out the jobs creation benefits of growing clean energy in our country, and the good jobs created by the wind energy industry as we continue to increase the manufacturing facilities for the wind energy industry in states like Michigan."

With construction beginning soon the facility is scheduled to begin producing wind turbine towers in March 2011. The facility will be built on a "brownfield" site adjacent to water, truck, and rail service and will supply towers to a number of nearby states. The facility will be a 115,000 sq. ft, state of the art, wind tower manufacturing facility and will employ 150 new workers when fully operational. It is expected that the plant’s construction will be completed in approximately nine months.

Ventower is a full service fabricator and supplier of industrial scale, wind turbine towers. Focused on original equipment manufacturers, the company will provide high quality wind towers to customers throughout the Great Lakes Region using readily accessible waterborne, rail and truck transportation options.

W is for WINDPOWER

Former President George W. Bush will be addressing WINDPOWER 2010 in Dallas in May.

The former president will talk about his experience as Texas’s governor, and as President, in advancing the wind energy agenda. (Texas is the number one wind state in the United States and, though most people don’t realize it, it was President Bush who first raised the prospect of getting 20% of U.S. electricity from wind.)

The former President now lives in Dallas.

www.ventower.com/

By Chris Madison, AWEA, www.awea.org/blog/